GRUMPY CAT’S WORST CHRISTMAS EVER, A Begrudingly Forced Review

Have you ever seen when an ancillary character on a TV show gets a spinoff series, but it only fails miserably? Or when something on YouTube ignites the imaginations of millions, but never translates to anything worthwhile? Or a great internet meme that just can’t be translated into anything else but the meme it was?

Well, I think this will be the shortest amount of time that a franchise will ever exist, that being of Grumpy Cat. Every scene that had Grumpy Cat in it at least had some cute visuals in it, via the cat. But otherwise, they should have left grumpy as an image with some text at the bottom of the pic.

But then someone sold out to the quickest or only bidder to make a movie based around Grumpy Cat, in Lifetime’s Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever.

On the bright side, who ever owns Grumpy Cat at least found themselves having a nice little pay day for having a cute cat that they posted on the internet.

On the other bright side, they will probably NEVER make another Grumpy Cat movie ever again because what little production money they had, they spread around on no-name actors, writers who moon-lighted from the Syfy or Hallmark channels, and a little bit of self-defacing interludes.

I did not set out to watch this movie. I had only heard about it on the web some time ago and discarded the memory after that. But tonight I apparently stumbled upon the telecast premiere on Lifetime Channel. Oh goody. And here I was worried about having to watch I Frankenstein.

I tuned in about 45 minutes after it started was able to surmise that the movie was about an expensive canine being dog-napped, a kid who owns Grumpy Cat whose parents divorce is impacting her life, and some stupid ass criminals trying to cash in through the ransom for the expensive dog.

In my mind Grumpy Cat was a foul mood male character, but instead, Grumpy was voiced by Parks and RecreationsAubrey Plaza, Secondly, it seems that all the animals talked, but I could not ascertain for the longest time if the humans heard them or not.

The story was hokey, the acting was sub-par and the only high point were the little interludes focused on the cat itself.

About an hour in, there was a banner that flew across the screen that said “If you’re still watching this movie, I’m worried about you.” And later, the cat was saying to itself that one character should not start getting sappy, but then said, “Oh wait, they can do that. This is a Lifetime movie.”

Ah, OK, the young girl played by Megan Charpentier could hear the cat. OK, there’s that.

But otherwise, even if this movie might seem geared towards watching with pre-schoolers, I’m thinking the adults would pay a baby-sitter to sit through this while they abandoned the house to somewhere safe, like a bingo parlor.

I originally thought this was going to be the shortest critical piece I would have ever written, but the amount of angst I had apparently bested my idea of this being a minimalist review. But there was enough frightening aspects about the movie that I seemed to have been inspired… no, unspired.

But how do I really feel?

All joking aside, this movie would be cute for some specific circles of TV watchers, and it is safe to leave or put on if there are youngsters in the room.

PS: OK, there was one funny moment where the doofy parents show up at the end and ask the girl if she’s OK and if they did anything to her. Grumpy says, with the perfect tone, “That’s a different kind of Lifetime movie.”